Ok. Let's get this straight. PHP is not dead. It's not going to die anytime soon. Why? PHP released a new version recently (actually just a few months ago). It exists in more than 80% of all websites. It’s also used actively by millions of developers. None of that will disappear out of thin air.
Despite the fact that many new languages flourish every year, I would not hesitate to say that PHP (besides JS) is one of the safest languages in the world in terms of jobs, and will securely guarantee an enormous job market around the world for much longer than 5 years. Here is why.
PHP adopts new ideas slowly. It may sound like a weird reason for a programming language to keep up with the contemporary development trends. In fact, what happens is only proven, polished and time-checked ideas find their way into PHP.
PHP has low entry level. This means that it is one of the easiest languages to start coding for newbies ever. Then, once it is adopted by newbies, it often turns out that this language is enough for a lot of people that do not need genius, complex, mathematical and scientific features. Result - they just keep using PHP.
Big platforms and companies which use PHP make lots of money every day! WordPress, for example, which is made in PHP, is a free framework, but WordPress.com is a commercial WordPress hosting and makes money out of it. Then, there are tens of others like it. Now multiply this business volume by the number of other big PHP projects, like shopping carts, CRMs, issue tracking systems, web analytics...
And one of the biggest reasons...
Servers accessibility. The cheapest servers / VPS for web projects always support PHP. PHP has one of the lowest minimum requirements to the memory / processor speed.
Is PHP on the decline? Yes. But that doesn’t mean it’s going away any time soon.
Consider COBOL. An almost sixty year old language that’s horrible by modern standards and has been on the decline for thirty years. Yet it runs our financial infrastructure, and there are still an estimated one million COBOL developers worldwide. Maybe that is what PHP will be like in a couple of decades.
Top comments (46)
I'm in PHP for ~20 years. First 5 years I heard that it's language without future. After 5 years I heard that it will be die naturally in a while. Now I hear that it's oldschool and not modern. And I still work with PHP...
I personally disagree about php being declined and I super disagree about php is crappy.
I think php is a genius language.
nope, you dont know yet,, you havent fully understood it.
I wish I didn't understand it. I'll never get those years of my life back and be able to spend them on something that doesn't suck.
that is the problem, you don't value the time you used learning the language, you'll never grow with that mindset.,
I disagree. How many languages do you use? Because I love programming I can't stand to see things be so badly designed. There are so many things in PHP that are so badly thought out they're almost offensive. I grow by learning a lot, leaving the bad behind and hanging on to the good. By constantly re-evaluating.
You won't grow if you get hung up on a small number of languages and don't learn to appreciate the good and become aware of the bad.
Thats the problem you dont appreciate the things that are made for anyone to use.. Ive used a lot of lanuage, and it all depends on how you structure your codes, and it all depends on where you use the language.
We all know they have their own strengths and weaknessess, but they are all great.
If you really love coding, appreciate them. I know your just speaking from you own opinion, we all have our own voice. This is my last reply, peace out 😁👍.
Not all languages are great, if they were then Fortran and COBOL would still be widely used. It's not "a problem" to find fault. Many crappy languages aren't used anymore because they either started off poorly designed or didn't evolve fast enough. PHP suffers from both those problems.
Rather than a problem it's an amazing thing because it causes our tools to evolve.
Just because you love coding doesn't mean you have to appreciate all languages. I think rather, if you can't criticise artwork you can't truly appreciate art.
Yeah I know, its ok to criticise them because they have their own different strengths and weaknessess, they have their own pros and cons,
and We all know that "If you cant criticise artwork you can't truly appreciate art".
For me they are not "crappy" or what ever you call it. But still I appreciate this languages. This people who made this spend time years and years creating this art pieces.
PS: PHP is very widely used, and is evolving. Its been 27 years now, and still php is getting updates and still being supported until now. please do a research. peace out 😁👍.
I know PHP is still evolving I said myself that it's evolving but not fast enough. And sure it's widely used but it's losing ground all the time. Fifteen years ago more than half the jobs I was sent from recruiters used PHP, now less than 10% do.
PHP is not fun, it's not powerful, it's not profitable and there's simply too many better options available for it to be worth wasting time on it.
Even if you like it, just let it die for the sake of your future employment options and your future possible salary.
Wow dude, I've worked with 9 languages and PHP is one of the better ones out there. Sure it's not the best, but it's gotten better to the point where it can go head to head with Java and even be used in other cases besides web development, like ML, AI, and maybe even game development now that it has JIT.
What does need to die is Wordpress. At this point, either it needs to convert to a framework so that it is aimed at developers first, or just stop using the plugin system altogether, as this is not the proper way to build software.
I don't think it's your place to be telling anyone here what route they should take if you can't give a good use case as to when to use PHP. Besides, the fact that you're telling me that you can't think about references just shows me that you're not at a level where you can work comfortably with them. High performance languages like C, Go and even C# work with references on a regular basis and mastering them will only do good for you with building more efficient applications.
Your problem isn't with the language, it's with the ecosystem and the poor examples of code you have found in the wild. I used to say the same thing about Java, but I've come to realize that, although Java isn't very nice in its verbosity, it's still a pretty neat language, but the ecosystem of overengineered libraries and continuous use of XML configurations over using classes means that it needs to improve, but it's slowly coming out of there (annotations are no better for performance, but gotta start somewhere I guess).
PHP can surely be used for game development, theoretically, if it's at roughly the same performance level as Java now (granted, the JIT implemenations between both languages are a lot different). Sure, you obviously can't build a AAA game with it, that's a no-brainer but you can definitely build small indie games with it now, but before we can get there, PHP needs to continue improving its JIT compiler and the community should start creating game engines that we can leverage. Really, it's definitely possible; if people use Python for small games, surely PHP can meet that level too.
All I see here is an inflated ego and a sure sign that if you don't become open minded about how to bring out the best of the tools available, you won't keep progressing to a senior developer. Let this be a lesson to all those who read this thread. Humility and openness to using multiple tools will make you a well rounded developer. PHP is here to stay for a long time and it's in a stage where we will start seeing it in many interesting use cases.
Fortran is still widely used within its niche, scientific computing. It is not so commonly used to the extent that High-Performance Computing is not so commonly used or needed in the world of computer programming.
Yet you talk like a Junior. I'm just looking out for people who bash anything simply because they have a bad time with a tool. Either way, PHP is not going anywhere and it will continue to be a recommended language for web development so long as developers know basic app architecture and patterns for good code.
Yet you keep coming back 😂
Haha, I wasn't able to hold my laugh, My 3rd language is PHP in 2007, JS/Node is fifth, I don't like NodeJS, as you say so.
I will prefer PHP 8/8.1 & Clojure or Java/C++. Rest are fillers.
Believe me, You and I will die soon but PHP live.
😀 😀
The last statement is funny
Only noob devs say PHP/Java are dead, I've seen them "dying", like, for 5 to 10 years now, and here they are, pretty much alive and doing their best to modernize themselves.
I love PHP, BTW, it's one of my favorite languages.
Same! PHP is one of my favorite languages!
A lot of the like/dislike for the language comes from not just language itself, but so much with tooling, frameworks, documentation and best practices around it.
When I started learning PHP ~10 years ago, I used Notepad++ with FTP plugin to edit WP sites on the shared hosting etc. around it. A hot list of no go practices for these days.
The use of PHP declined for me over the time, it felt like a tool for big teams where they can spend time to maintain stuff, but I mostly do glue code like data transformations, serveless scripts that live their own little lives, static websites etc.
But ~6x months ago finally decided to bite the bullet and pick up Laravel... through proper means of learning resources and VSCode and Intelliphense and testing and Laracasts etc. etc.
In short, it never have felt better to learn something new and build with it that I know will be up and running for years of even decades to come. The Laravel experience is what have renewed my trust in PHP.
Php is a fun language, especially when building structures.
Every language has their place to shine
I'm 100% with ya PHP will shine till I die
No language is dead or will die as long as it can make a job done.
I had to do some php recently for school and I was used to a lot JavaScript and it was really simple to do authentication etc., but I really dislike how fast my code was really complex looking and hard to make out what what did. I don't know if I don't know the tricks to let the code speak for itself, but for me it definitely didn't work.
The MVC solution sold to many for keeping PHP from dying is a hack.
If you've ever tried to put GoLang (Gin + template/html + Gorm) against Laravel you might realise that you've been hiding in a bubble.
There can be many better solutions but it doesn't mean, people are going to replace everything. Imagine, how expensive would be to replace half of the WordPress websites running? It would be a massive investment that no one wants to do. And this is an extremely important point why PHP is still powerful. I don't code in PHP, but I make budges for my projects and cloud solutions, and this is not easy and pretty much ignored.
There are many php enthusiasts in my country and it is very enjoyable to use
🤐
That part cracks me up 🤣
Tem certeza disto? Nao creio que PHP seja tão ruim assim.
Are you sure about this? I don't think PHP is that bad.
I code mainly in php, with added shell for tasks that require daemons. I've never really had the need to move to any other backend language.
Laravel have made this even better
I learned PHP first before laravel... It was like learning HTML/CSS/JS then going to frameworks like React JS and so on... My friend uses PHP language in the agriculture web app and it was pretty cool... PHP is still there always